Blasts rock Israel as rockets fired from Lebanon

HAIFA, Israel - Explosions were heard near Israel’s border with Lebanon on Thursday, witnesses and AFP correspondents said, as Lebanese security sources said militants had fired four rockets at Israel.

Witnesses reported hearing several blasts near the northern coastal town of Nahariya. No casualties or damage were reported. The Israeli army said that none of the rockets had hit the ground inside Israel. “We heard about four or five explosions, and then the sirens went off for about a minute,” a woman named Yasmin from the northern village of Klil told AFP.

A security source in Lebanon said that four rockets were fired at Israel from the south. “Unknown gunmen fired four rockets from two positions, south and east of Tyre, at Israel,” the source said as residents in the area said they heard four blasts.

The Israeli army said its Iron Dome missile defence system intercepted one of “three or four rockets fired from south of Tyre.”

The interception took place between Nahariya and the coastal town of Acre, further south. None of the rockets, which were “probably a launching done by a global jihadi organisation,” hit Israeli territory, army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner told journalists, saying they might have fallen “in the sea or elsewhere.”

Lerner added that airspace in the north of Israel had been closed following what he described as an “unprovoked attack on Israeli citizens.” The Israeli army did not retaliate, Lerner said. Israeli police urged residents of the north to remain close to bomb shelters. The Iron Dome batteries, which are deployed throughout Israel, can shoot down rockets with a range of up to 70 kilometres (44 miles).